


Launch Your Assault

by Tozette



Series: Hinata at Hogwarts [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Lovecraftian Themes, M/M, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 11:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17000412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: Fifth year delinquents Hidan and Kakuzu kidnap Hinata to sweet talk a unicorn, and it all goes downhill from there. [Fusion AU! Naruto characters in a Hogwarts setting.]





	Launch Your Assault

**Author's Note:**

> ### Read this note to reduce any confusion! 
> 
> (at least it's a short note)  
> A while back I posted [Hogwarts AU: Hinata Takes A Baby Step Toward Delinquency](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977020/chapters/25632453), which is a short piece of work included as part of my giant pile of ficlets and prompt fills.This post contains that fic! It starts with that fic. But it's edited and expanded and more than double the length so it gets its own post. It's also kind of a different mood, honestly.

Hinata crept out just as the sun was coming up. She didn’t wake any of the girls in her dorm, and when she got down stairs there was only Kiba passed out on the couch in the common room. His familiar was flopped across his belly, snoring softly.  
  
She headed out to the Quidditch pitch with nobody in Gryffindor tower the wiser. It was cold outside, and the sky was a kind of luminous slate, dim but lightening even as she walked. The grass was icy and damp and her breath steamed in the air.  
  
The Slytherin Quidditch team was already in the air when she made it down, although it looked more like play than practice – Sasuke seemed more determined to put the quaffle through Naruto’s head than through any of the hoops, and Naruto was laughing loudly, calling out increasingly rude challenges as he diverted each attempt.  
  
As Hinata came closer, he flipped in mid-air, using the bristles of his broom to smack the quaffle away from the hoops. The sky was lightening to silver grey as she climbed up to the stand, and it caught Naruto’s bright hair fiercely in its light.  
  
“You haven’t scored yet,” he reminded Sasuke cheerfully.  
  
Hinata cringed a little, because it didn’t take a genius to know what came next.  
  
Naruto bellowed, somehow surprised when Sasuke flattened himself to his broom and sped toward him. One pointy elbow connected with Naruto’s belly, sending him into a shrieking spin in mid-air which was halted only by the painful intervention of a goalpost.  
  
The quaffle went through the centre hoop with a whoosh and a _ding!_ from the scoring charms.  
  
“That’s a foul, bastard!” yelled Naruto, although he didn’t sound like he was very upset.  
  
Even from her distance, Hinata could see Sasuke look at the quaffle, then at Naruto and then back to the quaffle. She could imagine the telltale narrowing of his eyes.  
  
“Hey, what–”  
  
Predictably, he hurled it at Naruto’s face. It made a loud _whap_ when it connected.  
  
"That’s her, isn’t it? She’s the only Gryffindor here – Hey, Hyuuga, right?”  
  
Hinata turned, alarmed at being addressed.  
  
She blinked once, slowly, and felt her stomach knot up. She knew the people approaching her, but only by reputation. They were both older than her - fifth years. The reputation she knew them by was… not good.  
  
Kakuzu was big, raw-boned but broad and getting broader all the time. He was barely sixteen and taller than most grown men she knew. His dark skin was peppered with ugly scars – his parents had been high-ranked followers of Grindelwald’s, and the scars were rumoured to be some kind of dark magic of theirs gone awry. Rumour also said Kakuzu had shown up knowing more curses when he was Sorted than most students did by fourth year.  
  
Hinata tried not to put much stock in that because knowing a lot of curses was basically self defence in Slytherin house, as far as she could tell – even Naruto knew more hexes than he really should, and he was as close to harmless as they came. She’d seen him cast one that turned all the victim’s hair to noodles. The Ramenator Jinx was a completely original hex. It was very impressive, even if their teachers didn’t seem to entirely agree.  
  
The other boy was the one who’d called her name, which was unfortunate and.. maybe a bit frightening. Hinata didn’t want either of them even knowing she existed, but if one of them had to she’d have taken Kakuzu any day.  
  
Everybody knew Hidan had no parents. His mother had died birthing him – almost unheard of in the Wizarding World – and his father had made the papers four years ago, dead with his guts hanging out in some horrific ritual sacrifice to some strange god whose name no one could pronounce. Hidan looked unearthly with his colourless skin and hair and bright pink eyes, and even if Hinata didn’t hold with pureblood prejudices about children who killed their mothers just by being born, or children the sun wouldn’t touch, or –  
  
Well. Hidan made her nervous just by existing. And now, apparently… he knew her name. Hinata’s hands were starting to sweat just thinking about it.  
  
“Neji’s cousin, right?” he said carelessly, swooping down on one side of her. His robes were all black, with none of the tokens of house pride other students put on them.  
  
“Ah… that’s true,” she said cautiously. Kakuzu had somehow ended up on her other side, towering over her, and the early morning was even colder in his shadow. Hinata licked her lips.  
  
High above, the Slytherin seeker put her fingers to her lips and gave a shrill whistle, drawing everyone’s attention. Karin looked strange with her hair pulled tightly away from her face, but nobody was allowed to play with their hair loose. She let go of her broom handle with one hand and gestured while she yelled over the wind. “Naruto, stop messing around! Sasuke–“ a brief pause, like she hesitated to tell him off, then, marginally less aggressive, ”–that’s what bludgers are for!”  
  
Naruto gave an outraged squawk.  
  
“She’s so damn loud,” muttered Hidan, much closer, scowling up at Karin.  
  
Hinata twitched at the sound of his voice. Well, at least if his strange pink eyes were fixed on Karin then they weren’t looking at Hinata.  
  
“Can you really make that criticism?” Kakuzu wondered. His voice rumbled up like something from the belly of the earth. It was probably the first time Hinata had actually heard him speak. His voice was deeper than she expected.  
  
“What’s that meant to mean?” Hidan asked. He turned back, eyes narrowed, chin raised.  
  
Between them, Hinata froze. She couldn’t think of anywhere she wanted to be less right now. Maybe her father’s study. Or Azkaban.  
  
“Nobody’s louder than you,” said Kakuzu, like he couldn’t even feel Hidan’s deeply unsettling regard testing on him.  
  
Hidan spat. Hinata flinched.  
  
“At least when I’m talking it’s about something important,” he growled.  
  
“Stop it,” said Kakuzu. Hidan bristled even more at that. Hinata clutched her wand. She desperately needed to practice her shield charms. “You’ll scare her.”  
  
Hidan subsided in confusion. He peered down at her. “Nah, she’s a Gryffindor, isn’t she? What’re you even doing watching them?” he wondered aloud. His eyebrow quirked. “Oh… Spying?”  
  
Spying? “No!”  
  
“She’s always out here, according to Yamanaka,” said Kakuzu. “I doubt she’s spying. If she was, the Gryffindor team wouldn’t always be so surprised by their tactics.”  
  
“…Hm, is that so?“ mused Hidan, looking between Hinata and the flying figures above.  
  
“Um…” Hinata looked between them. She still wasn’t sure what they wanted with her and she was very uncomfortable sandwiched between them like this. “Can I help you?”  
  
Despite how nervous she felt, there was no repeating sounds and no stalling when she spoke, which meant today was a good day. Not every day was, and being nervous usually made it worse.  
  
“Yes,” Kakuzu said, which was not at all what Hinata had been hoping to hear. “You do Care of Magical Creatures, right? How are you with unicorns?”  
  
“Um,” said Hinata. She’d met one unicorn, and it had not been in class. She knew they weren’t friendly to a lot of people, supposedly people with, er, impure natures…  
  
She looked uncertainly between the two upperclassmen. What if they’d found a sick one, or a lost foal or something? Hinata chewed her bottom lip. It couldn’t hurt to be honest, could it?  
  
“Um, I don’t know a lot about them but they’re… friendly…?”  
  
“Fuck yes,” exploded Hidan, beaming. It was a very alarming expression to have directed at her – Hinata was worried that anything that made Hidan look like that was not a good thing at all. “I told you. I knew she’d be able to do it. She’s _exactly_ the type!”  
  
Kakuzu shot him an annoyed look and clicked his tongue against his teeth, impatient. “I didn’t say she wasn’t. We’re out here, aren’t we?” He looked back at Hinata. “Can you get one to come and stay still?”  
  
“I-” Hinata hesitated. “I think so,” she said slowly, swallowing, and looked anywhere but at the pair of them. “But–”  
  
_But I’m not sure I want to do whatever you’re thinking about,_ she wanted to add, but it didn’t come out at all. So much for bravery!  
  
She chewed her bottom lip. How did she say it..? _Could_ she say it? “Um…”  
  
“Good,” he said flatly. Then he took her by one shoulder - and his hand was heavy and hot in the icy dawn air - and steered her down from the stands.  
  
Hinata glanced up to where most of the team had finally gathered and was now paying proper attention to its small, vicious captain. Naruto’s hair was bright like a beacon. She saw him stick one arm out and shove Sasuke sideways without ever looking away from whatever Mei was saying.  
  
“Where…?”  
  
“The forest, obviously,” said Hidan. He fell into step on Hinata’s other side just as soon as they were on the ground and there was room to do it. Bookended between the two of them, Hinata found herself propelled toward the sprawling greenish shadow of the forest.  
  
The _Forbidden_ Forest. Which was… forbidden. As in, they should not go there.  
  
“Ah, are you sure we should… um, that is…” None of Hinata’s thoughts were coming out correctly in words today. Or… most days, really.  
  
“Spit it out,” ordered Kakuzu.  
  
Hinata flinched, and was very glad that she hadn't stumbled over herself in stuttering yet this morning. “Ah, that is… the forest, is. Um. We can’t… go there?”  
  
She’d only come out of the castle to watch the Slytherins at practice – Naruto-kun was their keeper this year and she… Hinata liked to watch him. That was all.  
  
She didn’t understand why they were out there anyway. It was six in the morning, barely light outside, and even third years like Hinata knew Kakuzu didn’t care about Quidditch. And it wasn’t even Hidan’s house! But they’d been right there, like they were waiting for her specifically or something – except that was impossible. Surely if they’d been looking for her, a _Gryffindor_ practice would have been the right place? Or– or _lunch in the Great Hall_ , not a six am ambush!  
  
And if they’d been looking for her specifically for, for some kind of presumed skill with unicorns? What did that mean they thought about her…?  
  
Her face was warm. She suspected she was blushing fiercely.  
  
Hidan, at some point, had started to laugh - real, shoulder-shaking peals of laughter.  
  
“We can go wherever we want,” he said breathlessly when he’d finally recovered from this bout of hilarity. “The forest’s a little dangerous, but not if you’re not stupid. If we get caught we might lose points or something–” here Hinata cringed “–but it’s not like we _can’t go_.”  
  
That was exactly what it was like! Hinata still remembered the shame and embarrassment of losing points for forgetting her homework once in second year. It had been the only time – but she could almost feel everybody in the classroom looking at her when she thought about it. It had been a terrible moment – her burning face and the horrid swooping feeling in her guts and the unsteady trembling of her fingers and –  
  
“Yo, seriously, calm down. It’s not that dangerous, Shub-Niggurath’s tits, it’ll be fine. Half the teachers aren’t even up to catch us.”  
  
Hinata was not sure what a ‘shub niggurath’ was, but the word echoed strangely on the air and one of Kakuzu’s stiff shoulders gave a twitch almost like a flinch.  
  
“Stop that,” hissed Kakuzu.  
  
“Coward,” said Hidan, smiling in a way that wasn’t very friendly at all.  
  
“Um,” said Hinata. Trees loomed.  
  
They were definitely going into the forest.  
  
Visions of being caught - of humiliating points losses, or – oh Merlin – detention flashed before Hinata’s eyes.  
  
What if they _told her father_? He would be infuriated to be interrupted in his schedule by a letter complaining about Hinata's conduct. He was still not quite recovered from the shock of his most disappointing daughter being sorted into Gryffindor, but _detention_? It would be just the proof he needed that she was destined to be a delinquent.  
  
But she couldn’t say no to Hidan and Kakuzu, not really. They were bigger, older, and Kakuzu had a firm grip on her shoulder. Even aside from all that, with the things she’d heard about them – she’d be safer in the forest than disagreeing with them. She knew Obito, one of the fifth years in Gryffindor, was friends with them, and Obito was – Obito was --  
  
She swallowed down the feeling of nausea.  
  
Hinata was so preoccupied with visions of doom that she barely noticed when they passed the first big tree. Suddenly it just seemed that they were in the forest proper.  
  
It was still dark under the canopy - it would be another hour until sunrise in the forest. The trees were huge, dark pillars looming out of the dimness, and everything smelled of wet leaves, moss and earthy things. Small twigs and rocks crunched underfoot as they went. It was much colder than it had been in the open air. Abruptly, Kakuzu’s hand felt like the only warm thing left in the word. Hinata shivered.  
  
They quieted as they went, even Hidan, which felt ominous.  
  
Kakuzu steered her unhesitatingly toward clearing deep in the forest, where dawn was at least touching the air. There was a big dry rock in its centre, and that was where they prodded her to sit.  
  
“Um,” said Hinata. The rock was cold. The air was cold. She tucked her hands into her sleeves.  
  
“This is going to be so boring,” Hidan complained.  
  
“You can leave.”  
  
“Piss off.”  
  
“Then don’t complain.”  
  
They waited in awkward silence for a few long minutes. Hidan sighed a huge sigh, then slumped back against the trunk of one of the colossal, towering trees at the far edge of the clearing. Kakuzu didn’t move.  
  
Hinata worried at the sleeve of her sweater. “Um. Are we…” She still wasn’t sure what was going on.  
  
“They come here sometimes,” Kakuzu explained. “We’ve seen them. They won’t stay still for us, though,” he added, scowling.  
  
“Oh.” Hinata, to put it delicately, was not surprised that Kakuzu didn’t exactly attract unicorns. And Hidan – well, you could almost taste the dark arts on Hidan. That thought made her heart skip a beat, because dark arts and unicorns, well –  
  
It was such an awful, rude thing to ask somebody, but her mouth moved almost on its own: “You’re not, um, you’re not going to h-hurt…?” the 'h' sound dragged out without her permission, long and distorted, and then her voice died, trailing off into a mortified silence.  
  
There was a pause. Hidan made a low huffing sound of laugter, short and surprised.  
  
“Wow, you must think we’re real shitty pieces of work,” he said.  
  
Hinata’s heart was thundering now, unsettled in its cage between her lungs. She lowered her eyes to her hands. “Sorry. I –”  
  
“Whatever you might think of me personally,” Kakuzu said, without changing expression, “assume I’m not so stupid as to kill a unicorn… or use tainted unicorn blood for anything. You’d have to be a moron.”  
  
She nodded in humiliated silence.  
  
It took almost no time before they heard the sound of hooves crunching in the undergrowth, although the minutes crawled by like hours.  
  
Finally, a pale equine face peered out from around a tree trunk. Its eyes were huge and dark and its ears were pricked forward. The horn on its head was as long as Hinata’s arm, gleaming silver and wickedly sharp. After a long curious second, the unicorn dropped its head and sauntered on closer, horn bobbing with every leisurely step.  
  
As she got closer, Hinata could see it was a mare - easy to tell, since she was fat and swollen with a foal. She was swaybacked and there was some pure white coming in among the silvery hair on her nose.  
  
The wan morning sunlight shone down on her coat and made her glow silvery and beautiful in the dim forest.  
  
Even just seeing her made Hinata breathe a little easier. The clearing felt warmer for her arrival.  
  
She ignored Hidan and Kakuzu and approached Hinata to nose at her shoulder, careful with her horn. Hinata sat still, almost afraid to breathe.  
  
The unicorn made a low noise, shoving harder with her nose.  
  
“A…Ah,” murmured Hinata, and obligingly reached up and scratched her withers. The mare wickered happily and shivered.  
  
“Fucking uncanny,” muttered Hidan from his seat at the foot of the tree - sufficiently far that the unicorn eyed him warily but did not seem distressed or aggravated by his proximity. “Told you.”  
  
Kakuzu ignored him. He uncrossed his arms and dug around until he came up with a silver potions knife and a crystal phial, the sort people used to keep magical impurities out. If they didn’t want blood… he must want the hair, Hinata realised.  
  
Kakuzu’s approach was noisy in the quiet forest, a crunch-crunch-crunch of boots over bark and twigs and leaves. The mare’s ear twitched in his direction uncertainly.  
  
Her eyes widened and her head – and her horn – rose abruptly. “Um, I think it’s best to introduce yourself,” Hinata said nervously.  
  
Kakuzu paused.  
  
“Introduce myself,” he echoed, sounding dubious.  
  
“Here,” Hinata held out a hand. She wasn’t quite sure where her confidence came from – she felt better with the unicorn there, with her big shining warmth right at her side. It was easy to take Kakuzu’s wrist and draw him two steps closer.  
  
The unicorn gave him a long, steady look. He shifted on his feet, knife forgotten in one hand. The unicorn transferred her gaze to Hinata. She looked faintly judgemental.  
  
“Sorry,” said Hinata, although she couldn’t tell quite what she was sorry for.  
  
“They’ve never let you that close before,” Hidan said thoughtfully. Then his voice took a turn for the sly. “Is it true about unicorns and virgins?”  
  
Hinata’s face was very, very hot.  
  
“That’s a muggle mistranslation,” Kakuzu corrected him flatly. “They like people who have pure intentions. And they can sense dark magic.”  
  
Carefully, he began cutting long coarse hairs from the unicorn’s tail.  
  
The unicorn looked up at the first tug and turned a baleful eye – and her long, sharp horn – on him.  
  
Kakuzu stilled.  
  
“Hyuuga,” he hissed.  
  
“Oh!“ said Hinata, who had sort of shut down from embarrassment at Hidan’s question. “Um. Yes. Hello,” she said to the unicorn, holding her hand out again.  
  
The mare gave Kakuzu an unimpressed look for a few long, dangerous seconds.  
  
Then she huffed, blowing her sides out dramatically, and returned her attention to Hinata.  
  
Kakuzu’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “Good. That’s good,” he muttered. For the first time Hinata got the impression that he, too, was anxious about this.  
  
His nervousness didn't make Hinata feel better. Unicorns weren't dangerous for the most part, but the horns were sharp, and they weren't exactly _small_ animals. If they upset her... Hinata swallowed.  
  
The unicorn seemed to realise she was looking at Kakuzu again, because she shoved her nose insistently into Hinata’s hand.  
  
“I don’t have anything for you,” Hinata admitted. The mare snorted and shook her head, sending her mane swishing back and forth.  
  
“Would that work?” Kakuzu asked in his flat, gravelly voice.  
  
“Er… Probably.” Bribing animals with high value treats was Care Of Magical Creatures 101.  
  
“Good. You can bring her something next time.”  
  
“N–” Next time? Hinata twitched. “Next time?”  
  
“Yeah,” Hidan agreed, getting up and stretching. “Unicorn hair’s worth more than gold. But we don’t want to shave any of ‘em bald, do we?”  
  
The mare twitched and stomped one hoof. “You’re selling it?” Hinata asked in surprise.  
  
Kakuzu grunted an affirmative. “Neither of us comes from a background like yours,” he said. “The orphans’ fund doesn’t provide everything.“That must mean that Kakuzu’s parents were dead, too - or maybe that he wasn’t allowed to live with them. Hinata glanced at his scars and quickly looked away again. She hadn’t known. ”…Sorry,“ she said.  
  
“Stop apologising,” Kakuzu said.  
  
“So–” Hinata paused. “Um.”  
  
Hidan laughed, and this time it really was mean. “Are you done yet? I can’t feel my fingers.”  
  
“Nearly,” said Kakuzu, at the same time as Hidan took a step forward.  
  
As soon as his boot landed on the ground, the unicorn squealed and threw her head back. Her ears went flat to her skull. She took a nervous step to one side, shivering and pawing wildly at the ground. Hinata could see the whites of her eyes.  
  
“Whoa.” Hidan rocked back on his heels. “You don’t have to freak out,” he complained.  
  
“Like I said,” said Kakuzu, scowling. “They can sense dark magic. He’s not coming any closer,” he said to the unicorn, who didn’t even flick an ear in his direction. She was too focused on Hidan. “Hyuuga, tell it.”  
  
Hinata looked at the unicorn, but it was clear she was having none of it. “I don’t think…”  
  
Even as Hinata said it, the unicorn whirled and fled with her hooves kicking up the dirt and leaves.  
  
“Stupid horse,” muttered Hidan.  
  
“Idiot,” said Kakuzu in an identical tone. He turned his scowl on the phial in his hand. There had to be at least twelve long shining strands of hair in the crystal container.  
  
Hinata tried to remember what the going rate for unicorn tail hair was. It wouldn’t be as much as the horns, which were only shed once a season, but more than dragon’s blood.  
  
“It’s enough,” said Kakuzu, and Hidan made a sound of relief in the back of his throat. “Let’s go.”  
  
Hinata was in complete agreement - they should get out of the forest as soon as possible. Despite this, Kakuzu and Hidan still seemed to feel the need to box her in and herd her out of the forest between them.  
  
The tree line became obvious because the sun had well and truly risen outside the forest – as the trees thinned out it was lighter and warmer, and Hinata breathed easier with every step. Maybe, just maybe, this whole bizarre morning would end without disaster.  
  
This, of course, was when a figure detached itself from the shadow of a nearby tree. It resolved itself into wild-haired shape of Jiraiya-sensei. He taught Ancient Runes, but he was a favourite among the younger students… usually. Probably not, Hinata thought numbly, in this situation. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Oh no. Oh no.  
  
“Hidan, Kakuzu.” There was a pause. “…And Hyuuga,” he added. “Huh. Are you two dragging younger students into your delinquency now?” There was another pause and a huge sigh as he crossed his arms. “…That’s going to cause me trouble, isn’t it?”  
  
Nobody said anything.  
  
“Fine, fine.” He scratched his chin. “That’s– twenty points each and a detention, I think. I’ll let your heads of house know so they can talk to you about it–”  
  
Hinata flinched. In Gryffindor, her head of house was – well. He was… Scary.  
  
“–and you can come up to the castle with me now, since apparently we can’t keep letting you wander.”  
  
It was a long, awkward walk up to Hogwarts. At the steps Jiraiya let them go. “It’s Saturday,” he yawned. “Go do Saturday stuff. Just try not to get bloody arrested.” He squinted at Hinata for a second. “And you, maybe try making some other friends.”  
  
Hinata blinked and swallowed nervously. Few of her classmates were up, so nobody was really watching… except the portraits in the entrance hall. Their painted eyes made her nervous. She scrunched the edges of her cloak in her hands. “Um…”  
  
Jiraiya patted her once on the shoulder – she flinched again – and meandered off, probably to harass the Potions professor in her office.  
  
When he’d gone, Kakuzu gave Hinata a sharp, narrow-eyed look. “You could have told him we made you come with us.”  
  
Hinara blinked. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. And… they hadn’t, really. She hadn’t even been brave enough to protest. She shook her head.  
  
“Huh,” said Kakuzu, and whatever that meant she didn’t get to learn because he grabbed Hidan by the elbow and pulled him away – down towards the dungeons, she thought.  
  
“Ow, stop fucking– I can walk, shithead– Hey! Be seeing you, Hyuuga,” Hidan called over his shoulder, trying and failing to yank himself away from Kakuzu.  
  
Hinata watched dumbly after them. For a second she was alone in the entrance hall and calm, and then a portrait said “Detention, hmm? In my day–”  
  
Hinata felt her stomach give a mighty heave. Oh Merlin, what was her father going to say? She scurried off down the corridor at a run.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Hinata had never had a detention in her life. She didn’t know what to expect, and every time she thought about it she got a gut-wrenching twinge of anxiety. It felt like a broomstick accident just waiting to happen -- her stomach dropped, her breath choked, her hands trembled with a terrible rush of icy adrenalin. It made her knees weak and her eyes sting.  
  
And worst of all, she couldn’t even explain her response to her housemates.  
  
“Yeah..?” said Kiba, frowning at her in confusion. “Wait, what did you even get a detention for?”  
  
Hinata hesitated. Nervously. Kiba was as much her friend as anyone was -- which was to say, she liked him, and he sometimes sat with her. Hinata had few friends, although her family reputation was well known to everyone.  
  
“Um... that is... I... in the forest, I was...”  
  
“In the forest?” Kiba interrupted, raising his eyebrows. “Hinata! That’s dangerous!" He grinned. "I can’t believe you didn’t bring me!"  
  
Hinata twitched. She could feel her face changing colours. Several people had looked up from their work already to pay attention to the conversation instead.  
  
“Sorry,” Hinata said in a voice that was barely a whisper. She did not like the speculative looks she was getting.  
  
They shared potions with the Slytherins, and she felt both very lucky and very unlucky to see that, whatever else was going on, Naruto was too busy complaining at Sasuke to notice.  
  
It took Kiba most of the rest of their class -- forty two minutes, just before they left for lunch -- to pry out of Hinata what she had actually been doing in the forest. This was such a long process largely because the Potions Master’s gimlet stare scared Hinata’s socks off. Tsunade-sensei was terrifying to anyone with any good sense at all.  
  
Kiba, perhaps predictably, did not fear her in the slightest.  
  
Still, eventually he poked and prodded and wheedled and Hinata gave in and leaned toward him over her softly smoking cauldron to explain.  
  
“It was --” Hinata’s voice froze right there. She did not want to say that she’d been persuaded out to the forest with Hidan and Kakuzu. Kiba would end up -- well, misunderstanding, or telling someone (heaven help her if it got back to Neji, or worse, Hanabi) or... Hinata fidgeted. “I was just -- some of us, erm, went to see the unicorns--”  
  
“Really,” Kiba said, with an expression of some surprise. “You found them?”  
  
“Mm,” Hinata nodded.  
  
“Did they let you, you know --” He didn’t even have to finish.  
  
“Yes,” she said, quietly. She curled her fingers into her palm, remembering the velvety soft, living warmth of the unicorn under her hands.  
  
“Ha! Of course... As expected of Hinata, I bet you’re exactly the sort of girl unicorns would like,” Kiba laughed.  
  
Hinata still wasn’t completely sure what this meant exactly -- especially since Kakuzu had so confidently said that _that_ thing was a myth -- but since she now had evidence that it was quite true, she just ducked her head and did not bother to protest.  
  
“Five points from Gryffindor, Inuzuka,” said Tsunade-sensei’s faintly ominous voice, making Hinata freeze like a baby rabbit before a cobra, “for a potion that is dangerously unstable.”  
  
Kiba twitched as his bubbling magenta concoction vanished with an irritable fluter of Tsunade’s hand.  
  
Hinata slowly hunched over her own cauldron, sinking under her teacher’s attention. Tsunade eyed her potion critically -- and Hinata knew that hers, too, was not right, as it was sort of a pinkish puce where she had meant it to be mauve, so she cringed inside as well as out -- but Tsunade just hummed and swept on past.  
  
Hinata watched her long golden tail of hair shift with her stride. Her hands were shaking again.  
  
Kiba relaxed the moment Tsunade’s back was turned, and he returned to the topic with no real concern for his failed potions class. “It’s just a detention,” he assured her, tipping his head to one side until his neck gave a crack.  
  
“Mm,” Hinata murmured, more to acknowledge him than because she necessarily agreed.  
  
“It’ll be fine,” he tried again when they finally went to lunch and he noticed how little she wanted to eat through the anxiety curdling her stomach.  
  
Absently, Kiba held a piece of chicken out for his familiar, who wriggled happily underfoot.  
  
Hinata made another agreeing noise and deliberately put a piece of torn up bread inside her mouth. It sat there for what felt like hours. Swallowing seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.  
  
Kiba found some other friends during lunch, and was rapidly distracted from Hinata’s childish fears and anxieties, which she found she didn’t mind so much.  
  
When it came time to actually attend the detention, she left the common room alone.  
  
Shino showed up on the way. Perhaps he had been alerted by Kiba, who was much more his friend than Hinata was -- if he had been, then that was uncommonly thoughtful of Kiba.  
  
He fell into step in silence, which was how he did pretty much everything.  
  
He waited with her in the entryway, big and quiet and never once asking what a mousy little wallflower like Hinata had done to get a detention. He just stood, close enough to touch but never touching, radiating heat.  
  
“Right,” said Jiraiya, when he showed up, “enough of that, unless you want a detention too--”  
  
Hinata felt the brush of Shino’s robes pass as he left in the same silence with which he’d arrived.  
  
“Is he always that chatty?” he wondered.  
  
Hinata lowered her eyes again. “Shino can talk,” she said after a few moments of silent hesitation. Mostly he spoke to Kiba, and even then it was usually not very kindly. But Shino never hesitated to make himself understood.  
  
“Speak up when you talk to your teachers!” barked a voice behind her -- one of the monks in a painting hanging from the wall.  
  
Hinata did not speak up. She hunched and gripped her wand in both hands.  
  
“And stand up taller! Children these days, my word,” he kept going.  
  
Jiraiya observed the painting, lips curved with a distant sort of amusement.  
  
The pair of them waited in silence for several long minutes, until Hinata became aware that Hidan and Kakuzu had to be late for them to be taking this long.  
  
“I don’t know,” Jiraiya said finally, “what persuaded a girl like you to take up with a pair of kids like that.”  
  
Hinata looked up from her toes to see him leaning back against the castle’s stone wall, watching her now, with his arms crossed and a pensive expression on his broad, lined face.  
  
“You’re not a bad student, even if you’re not the top of the year. Your work’s always in on time. You’ve got almost no notes on your records -- never had a detention before. Quiet. Good family.”  
  
Hinata looked back down at her feet again.  
  
“You’re very cute, too,” he added thoughtfully. “The robes are hard to see past, but I bet there’s a sweet figure under there.”  
  
Hinata felt the overwhelming urge to tug at her hemline, and only the fact that it was already ankle-length stopped her from acting upon it.  
  
“Is this some kind of rebellion?”  
  
It didn’t sound strictly accusing when he said it -- more perplexed. It reminded her of her father anyway. She could almost hear Hiashi now, demanding to know why Hinata could not do more, work harder, be more, when he had given her every advantage and privilege possible. And what did she go and do with it --  
  
“No,” she said quietly. It was not rebellion. It was just --  
  
“Then what?”  
  
It was just that Hinata was such a pushover that she hadn’t felt able to say no.  
  
She felt abruptly like she was going to cry, and dropped her gaze even further so her hair hung in her eyes, even as they watered uncontrollably.  
  
“Aw, shit,” muttered Jiraiya, quietly enough that Hinata felt she probably was not meant to hear it.  
  
“Sorry,” she blurted, rubbing her eyes on the sleeve of her robe. “Sorry, I --”  
  
“Shub-Niggurath’s tits, what the hell?” Footsteps. “We’re _five minutes_ late, what did you do to make her cry?”  
  
“Five points from Hufflepuff,” said Jiraiya, by way of response.  
  
“Sorry,” said Hidan, bitingly, “I meant ‘what the hell, _sir_ ’.”  
  
“Another five, and another for being fifteen minutes late -- a round fifteen. Would you like to keep going?”  
  
Hinata rubbed her sleeve against her eyes while they were all distracted, both by the bickering and by how - evidently - Hidan didn’t care about house points in the slightest. She hated crying in public. She hated crying. It stung her eyes, drew attention, blocked her nose and made her splotchy and ugly.  
  
Hidan scoffed and opened his mouth, but Kakuzu batted him over the head. “Enough,” he growled.  
  
Hidan subsided immediately under this pressure from Kakuzu.  
  
“Five points from Slytherin, too.” For a second Jiraiya’s expression slipped -- and Hinata thought, maybe, that he was annoyed by how Hidan would listen to Kakuzu, but not, apparently, to his teacher. Hinata watched, quiet and anxious, but his expression smoothed out and he rallied again: “Can’t you two even be on time for your punishments?”  
  
This was clearly a rhetorical question and Hinata flinched to see Hidan peel back his lips and take a breath to respond again. She twitched even harder when Kakuzu unsubtly kicked him in the ankle. It was not a little, attention-getting kick. It looked, and sounded, like it hurt.  
  
Jiraiya seemed to grow more resigned and jaded by the second. “I have never been more glad to teach an elective class,” he said pleasantly, to the distant ceiling. One of the portraits laughed.  
  
“Alright, since you lot are so keen to go running about the forest, maybe some quality time spent stumbling around out there under supervision will take the shine off. Our esteemed -- and sexy -- potions mistress has a task for you.”  
  
“ _Se_ \-- oh, gross,” said Hidan, although he followed gamely enough when the Ancient Runes teacher began shepherding them out through the castle doors.  
  
“Ah, well, you’re young yet,” said Jiraiya, spreading his hands expansively. “The mysteries of the female form don’t hold any interest for little boys, I suppose...”  
  
"Female form," Hidan said, mockingly. "Right."  
  
Behind Jiraiya’s back, he shot Kakuzu a look, a capital-L Look, with an archly raised eyebrow and bared teeth, which he then licked slowly. His tongue was wet and pink, and slid smoothly over his white teeth.  
  
Kakuzu met his gaze steadily for a long, unimpressed second. He scoffed softly in the back of his throat and then looked away.  
  
Hinata did not even know what that was about but she knew she wasn't _touching_ it. She did not question it. Instead she fell into step behind all of them, trailing back and neatly avoiding the issue of proximity with any one of them. If anybody noticed, they didn’t comment.  
  
Their destination was the hut at the edge of the forest, which filled her with foreboding. The building itself was fine -- a structure of wood that seemed to sprout up from the earth with no intervention, crawling with plants and living greenery that softened the edges of it.  
  
But inside the groundskeeper’s hut was, inevitably, the groundskeeper.  
  
He was a wizard with a smile that seemed at once disarming, in the sense that he seemed likeable and charming, and also _disarming_ , in the sense that it could make Hinata feel like her limbs were in immediate danger when he turned it upon her.  
  
Even the other teachers seemed mildly wary of Zetsu. His moods were changeable. His personality was unstable. His temper was unreliable. And his teeth sometimes seemed... very sharp.  
  
“I’ll take good care of them, Jiraiya-sensei,” he said sweetly, although his mismatched eyes were lingering on Hinata. She did not want to tug at her robe anymore. Now she wanted to tug at her whole person, like perhaps she could hide it all. Kakuzu was large, she thought, feeling her heart rate spin up and up, faster under the pressure of his stare, and if she could put herself behind his bulk --  
  
The voice turned syrupy and cruel: “I could use the extra hands for this.”  
  
His eyes dropped to Hidan’s hands, and Hinata shifted on her feet nervously. Something about the way he said it made her wonder if those hands he could use had to be _attached_ to anything.  
  
Hidan smiled back at him, all teeth, hair and eyes shining pale under the moonlight.  
  
“Can’t wait,” he said, in a voice that Hinata’s insides, with no input from her higher thoughts, interpreted to mean _‘you can’t hurt me if I cut your face off first_ ’.  
  
“We’re going to go into the forest and look for fortnight berries,” Zetsu explained.  
  
Hinata felt her hands shake.  
  
“Oh... Are you scared?” he asked, and it took Hinata a few seconds to figure out that he was talking to her directly. “That’s a pity--” he said, and he seemed sincere for a second or two. Then, smiling, he added: “Maybe you should have thought about that before you broke the rules.”  
  
Hinata did not feel like any part of this required an answer. She looked at his shoes and tried not to think about how following Zetsu into the Forbidden Forest at night might lead to catastrophic heart failure.  
  
“Why would she be scared? She’s been in the forest,” Hidan sneered. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”  
  
“Hmm,” said the groundskeeper mysteriously.  
  
“Shut up, Hidan,” said Kakuzu flatly. His low, heavy voice rumbled out of the darkness above Hinata’s shoulder. She swallowed and did not turn back to look at him. “The more you talk, the longer this takes.”  
  
Hidan made a disgusted noise, but he stopped talking. It was strange, Hinata thought through her anxiety fog, how Hidan seemed so tractable with Kakuzu. He certainly wasn’t with anybody else.  
  
“Best to split them up, I think,” said Jiraiya cheerfully to Zetsu, as a parting comment. Then he waved vaguely and legged it back to the castle.  
  
It turned out that of the three of them Hinata was the only person even passing their herbology class.  
  
“Black thumb,” Kakuzu explained laconically, which Hinata guessed was representative of exactly the nurturing instincts she’d expected of him.  
  
Hidan did not seem to know that herbology class was even a thing.  
  
It was a core class, and... on some level Hinata wanted to _know_ , but she did not want to draw his attention by _asking_. She remained absolutely silent on the topic.  
  
Hinata found herself, therefore, being punished for getting caught in the Forbidden Forest with Hidan and Kakuzu by means of a detention... in the Forbidden Forest, with Hidan and Kakuzu. And then, out of a desire to split the boys up and get their task done faster, the staff member supervising them took off with Kakuzu, leaving Hidan and Hinata with a basket, a pair of bronze knives, and some salve in a jar.  
  
“The punishment for wandering around in the forest is more wandering around in the forest, huh?” Hidan wondered aloud as they carefully made their way in along a trail that looked like it had been stamped flat by something with hooves.  
  
Hinata didn’t know what it meant that Hidan had voiced exactly what she’d been so uncharitably thinking. Probably it meant that she was being unkind.  
  
It had been dim under the canopies in the pale morning light, and now, well after sunset, it was pitch black and icy cold. Hinata’s hand felt frozen to her wand, and every shadow and creak seemed primed to reveal some new terror.  
  
She bit her lip. “Come... er, if you want, we should get this started.” She stumbled over the ‘s’, letting it hiss out in ugly repetition.    
  
“There’s not really a rush,” said Hidan, stretching his arms above his head even as he strode fearlessly into the forest. “A detention’s gotta go for at least two and a half hours.”  
  
“Is that... a rule?” Hinata asked hesitantly, following him back into the black shadows beneath the trees.  
  
“Yep. So even if you clean all Tsunade’s cauldrons in forty minutes she’ll make you sit there for hours anyway.”  
  
Hinata wondered how someone who hadn’t seemed to know herbology classes existed could possibly know about obscure school rules like that one -- but then, if there was any one student who could be considered an expert on detentions, it was probably Hidan. Even Naruto-kun didn’t seem to land in trouble as often as Hidan did.  
  
Like a great many thoughts and feelings, Hinata had no problem swallowing that one. “Oh,” she said instead. So they’d be out here for at least a couple more hours.  
  
Peculiarly, she minded being here with Hidan a whole lot less right now than she had two days ago, on that morning with the unicorn -- now, when the forest was even more threatening and wild in the pitch black of twilight, it seemed better to be out here with someone like Hidan, who was so very unafraid.  
  
He was basically the opposite of Hinata, who felt as though she was afraid of everything.  
  
They walked slowly, casually, and Hinata listened to the rustling of the scrambling nocturnal animals that they startled with their footsteps. She tried not to imagine what kinds of dangerous creatures might be making those sounds in the dark, but it was hard.  
  
“Alright, what’s a fortnight berry and how do we get them?” Hidan said finally, once they were far enough in that the darkness seemed to close in all around them. The trees seemed to loom an awful lot more than they had in the misty dawn light.  
  
Hinata chewed her lip, trying to ignore how nervous she felt in the atmosphere. There was nobody out here to listen to her except Hidan, but he was scary enough. “They only come out at night, and only about twice -- erm, twice a month,” she said, tugging at the edge of her sleeve.  
  
“Th--” nervousness made her hover clumsily over the ‘th’ sound, repeating it for a few seconds. She stopped talking, clicking her teeth together. That was no good. _Slow down,_ she thought deliberately. _Start again, regulate your breathing._  
  
Thinking about elocution class just made her think of her dad’s face, staring at her while her tutor reported on her limited progress. _'It is, after all,'_ he'd said, smiling professionally into Hiashi's stony face, _'a disorder. Only so much success can be expected, especially in those whose speech suffers after childhood--'_  
  
Hinata had been quiet for too long.  
  
“Hello? Hyuuga? Are you fucking broken?” Hidan demanded, leaning too far into her space.  
  
Hinata flinched, and in flinching back she stumbled. Her shoes sounded so loud crashing through the leaf litter and underbrush.  
  
Hidan’s hand snapped out, grabbed her by the biceps and physically lifted her off the dirt before she could go careening into a tree. It seemed to require no particular effort on his behalf to yank her entirely off her feet.  
  
“Shub-Niggurath wept, I wasn’t _serious._ ”  
  
He let go the second she had her feet under her again, leaving a dull ache in her arm and the scary memory of her stumble. Hinata ducked her head, breathing hard. Her heart was too fast. Her hands shook -- her hands always shook, her hands were in a constant state of trembling.  
  
She opened her mouth, flustered, upset, fearful, nervous, ashamed --  
  
She closed her mouth again. Took a breath. Thought about what words to use. “It glows,” she said, very slowly and carefully.  
  
“The plant?”  
  
“Mm.” No words, that was okay.  
  
“Right, right, great, that’s easy at least,” Hidan nodded. “But seriously, you’re -- like, are you sick or something? If you’re sick we can definitely get out of detention.”  
  
She shook her head, sending her dark hair tumbling about her face.  
  
Hidan tipped his head, squinting at her in the dark, and then he shrugged and seemed to lose interest immediately.  
  
The detention itself went fast and -- perhaps not easily, but without unusual suffering on her behalf.  
  
Hidan really didn’t know the first thing about herbology, and he was an absolute butcher when called upon to handle the plants.  
  
The second time he seemed to forget his knife and ripped the entire stem free, Hinata held out one shaking hand and asked carefully to be allowed to take care of the cutting. “Let me.”  
  
She had relegated herself to speaking slowly in as few words per sentence as she could really get away with, which made her speech more comprehensible and less frustrating -- or, using Hidan’s phrasing, ‘less broken’.  
  
“Huh? Oh, sure.”  
  
It had taken all her nerve to interrupt him, but in the end, he was utterly unconcerned with who did what.  
  
What Hidan did spend most of their detention doing was talking. He didn’t seem to mind carrying the basket -- although he waved it around when he gestured, which sometimes threatened its contents, and sometimes posed a danger to nearby trees -- and more or less ignored where they were going, letting her squint through the darkness to find the soft reddish glow that indicated the berries they were looking for.  
  
After a while she stopped pointing and murmuring where she could see it -- his eyes weren’t as good as hers so he could never pick it out anyway. Then, too, she didn’t actually want to talk. And he just as obviously didn’t care where they were walking in the dark.  
  
He just wanted a captive audience upon whom to unleash a torrent of information about his interests.  
  
Hinata remembered when Hanabi used to do this, talking endlessly about her interest of the moment while Hinata kept an eye on her so their father could do more important things. With a child it had been cute, but with Hidan--  
  
Hidan, as far as Hinata could tell, liked dark magic -- very dark magic, the kind he probably couldn’t risk talking about up at the school, and which even in her father’s circles was spoken about only behind closed doors -- Kakuzu, starting fights, and obscure and terrifying religious lore, which he attended to rigidly.  
  
He made no effort to ascertain whether or not Hinata was interested in any of those things, which suited her just fine. His voice washed over her.  
  
“I don’t know anything about that,” she got out once.  
  
“‘A-a-anything’,” he repeated, sounding bemused. “Is that, like, are you doing that on purpose?"  
  
She felt her stomach flip. He had to _talk_ about it, didn’t he? She shook her head fiercely, remembered how dark it was, and then said, “No,” on a hiss of breath.  
  
“Huh. Weird. That’s fucked up.”  
  
She hunched, feeling the urge to make herself as small as humanly possible. The bronze knife shook in her hand, because she was, of course, shaking again.  
  
“W-well-- it’s--”  
  
“It’s what?”  
  
She stopped again and shook her head. Today was already a bad day for her stuttering and she didn’t think trying to explain it, in the forest in the dark, with her heart beating like a desperate captive against her ribs and her stomach in her throat, to somebody like Hidan, was going to help her. It would only make it worse, and then -- well. He might get annoyed with her. That, she wanted to avoid.  
  
Hidan was clearly not that interested. “Anyway, yeah, that’s fine, what was I saying?”  
  
Hinata took a deep breath, glad not to be the topic under discussion anymore. “Outer gods,” she prompted, pronouncing so slowly it sounded almost slurred.  
  
“Right, right. So Azathoth is at the centre of that --”  
  
_Azathoth_ was a name Hinata had read somewhere -- somewhere she wasn’t supposed to, she was pretty certain, because she had an inkling that it involved old, old parchment and hiding from her father’s gelid wrath beneath his desk. But she couldn’t recall where, or what it was about. It tickled in her memory, and the word itself seemed to pull at reality.  
  
“-- who’s like, part of our pantheon, obviously, but the major part -- the mindless primordial chaos at the centre of the universe,” Hidan went on. “Azathoth is like --”  
  
_Azathoth,_ it echoed. The night air took a gasping breath around them. Something fell with a dull thump from a nearby tree.  
  
“-- this shapeless blight at the centre of all infinity, placated by music and endless drums.”  
  
“Mm-hm,” said Hinata distantly. She was listening to Hidan, but she was also trying very hard to ignore any ambient distractions, and this included any peculiar thumps or startled hoofbeats. The Forbidden Forest had been making strange noises all around them for more than an hour. She could smell something rusty, but there were a lot of weird smells in the forest. Magical animals were weird and varied.  
  
Although... now that she was accidentally, upsettingly, paying attention again, everything was awfully quiet all of a sudden.  
  
“Are you listening to me?” Hidan’s demand was loud in the quiet.  
  
Hinata blinked. “Y-yes,” she said. “The pipes?”  
  
“Right, the pipes." Hidan’s voice washed over her like a strange, taboo blessing. The more Hidan talked, the less Hinata had to, even if he spoke to her about things that were not, strictly speaking, socially acceptable topics of conversation.  
  
The detention passed, as time usually did, and when Hinata eventually stumbled back up to the castle, she felt cold and tired.  
  
Hidan was exhausting.  
  
She crawled into bed and dreamed unquiet dreams of soft, stealthy, imaginary footsteps on the roof of her tower dorm. _You must sign the book of Azathoth in your own blood,_ whispered something, rising like steam from the sweltering sewers in her mind.  
  
She woke up with only vaguest memories of the dreams. The whole day she felt sick and lethargic, and she struggled to keep down her food.  
  
The rest of the week drifted by and Hinata avoided notice as studiously as she ever did. She attended classes. She spoke little in public but a lot when she was alone, quietly working herself into a froth as she castigated herself about talking -- frustration made her unkind to herself, paradoxically, when she knew her speech would improve if she could just calm down.  
  
All her efforts to figure out where she’d heard the name Azathoth were fruitless, and she dared not ask anybody. The references she did find to the name were in books of mythology that would have gotten her some raised eyebrows, had she actually been brave enough to check them out. All of the references were in passing, and tended to say things like 'the amorphous blight’ and 'the confusion which blasphemes at the centre of all infinity’ and ‘that boundless A-----th, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums, and whose progeny and dominion we shall not otherwise mention in this record’.  
  
Besides the difficulty of actually nailing down any knowledge on the topic, Hinata couldn’t help that her reading gave her increasingly strange dreams. Despite her poor memory of whatever nightmare thing kept murmuring to her in her sleep, her skin crawled when she thought about it.  
  
Her sleep was so poor that week that she missed Quidditch practice -- not Gryffindor Quidditch practice, which was irrelevant to Hinata because she wasn’t on the team, but _Slytherin_ Quidditch practice. She hadn’t been able to see Naruto practising. It was the first one she’d missed all year -- Naruto had missed more of his own practices than she had.  
  
Her disappointment followed her through the day.  
  
“Are you well?” Shino asked, when they lined up outside the greenhouses for herbology class. His voice was uninflected and his face had no expression, although his mouth was hidden behind his clean Ravenclaw scarf.  
  
“Mm,” she nodded, not looking at him. “Just tired.”  
  
“I see,” said Shino, and did not elaborate or pry further. She partnered with him for herbology. It was less stressful that way.  
  
Shino was, technically, not the only person who had noticed:  
  
Neji ignored the stares and whispers as he crossed between the long, populated house tables.  
  
“Recover immediately,” he commanded, glowering down at her in her seat at the table in the Great Hall. His face was thunderous. "Or I will notify your father and have you see a healer.”  
  
Hinata swallowed.  
  
“I am well, cousin,” she got out, as clearly as possible, and he sniffed, nodded sharply, and disappeared back to his own table, all obligations now discharged.  
  
Hanabi looked up from her other first year friends and her correspondence -- one of those letters, Hinata could clearly see, had the family crest on it -- tracking Neji’s progress between tables. Her eyes flicked to Hinata, and her mouth thinned into a fine line. She drew her gaze away immediately when it met Hinata’s. Whatever had drawn her attention wasn’t sufficient to pull her from her routine.  
  
The week was a strange one.  
  
Hinata remembered at breakfast on Friday, suddenly, Kakuzu telling Hidan not to talk about his gods -- and how Hidan had called him a coward, how Kakuzu hadn’t even bothered getting further into it with him.  
  
She decided not to look any further into Hidan’s peculiar religion. She resolved to avoid Hidan entirely, actually. Hidan brought out the worst in her -- her insecurities, her apathy, her restlessness -- and she didn’t even know him. Hinata had spoken to him on perhaps three occasions. Each had been exhausting.  
  
Determinedly, Hinata put food in her mouth and chewed. She had no idea what it was, and it tasted like ash.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I think... This one... Is not for everyone LMAO. If you liked something specific, or I guess if you have questions, please let me know. 
> 
> Note that the references regarding Shub-Niggurath and Azathoth are taken from writing by HP Lovecraft. I think that's probably pretty clear? but best to say it.


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